Pacific Northwest Ballet, which goes through between 2,000 and 2,100 pairs of pointe shoes a season, orders the shoes almost a year in advance. Their supplier, Freed, is based in the UK, among the countries affected by Trump’s imposition of 10% tariffs (although tariffs on some products have been renegotiated).
According to Gary Tucker, PNB’s director of communications, the company isn’t yet bracing for impact from the new tariffs, or stockpiling pointe shoes, which would be “a futile exercise” anyway, he said, since the shoes need to be ordered so far ahead of time. At Freed, individual makers create the shoes, which are marked with a signature icon denoting the
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